Janhavi Mittal

large_01-20191121_103737-Crop-JM.jpg

medium_01-20191121_103737-Crop-JM.jpg

small_01-20191121_103737-Crop-JM.jpg

thumbnail_01-20191121_103737-Crop-JM.jpg

01-20191121_103737-Crop-JM.jpg

“If they want to only protect wildlife and not people, let them turn to
animals for votes during elections. We neither get our forest rights, nor even
the status of human beings,” says Anar Singh
Badole. He is referring to claims made by officials of the Madhya Pradesh
forest department that Adivasi communities harm the environment, which are used to justify evicting them from their ancestral homelands.

Last week, 35-year-old Badole, who belongs to the Barela
Adivasi community, came to Delhi from Khairkheda village in Burhanpur district of Madhya
Pradesh to attend the Forest Rights Rally on November 21, 2019.  

He says
that the forest department denies many Adivasis rights over their community forestlands
by repeatedly bulldozing their crops, thereby forcing them to seek daily wages as agricultural labourers.
The land is then claimed by forest bureaucrats to set up plantations that bring
revenue for the forest department. The department is reportedly also planning to set up tiger reserves across 12 villages in
Burhanpur district. He speaks of how the Madhya Pradesh forest department hits back when his Barela Adivasi community tries to assert their agricultural rights on community forest land. For example, a protest against an eviction drive in the neighbouring village of Siwal led to a firing of pellet guns by forest officials in July 2019. “The government wants to set up plantations to lease to corporations on the land where we grow food crops like soybean, maize, jowar and rice,” he says. “Our crops are burnt to intimidate us and force us to relocate. Our claims to these lands are still pending.”

At the rally,
organised by the Bhumi Adhikar Andolan – an umbrella group of land rights
organisations and people’s collectives across India – Badole’s account was as
common as it was moving. At least 2,000 people participated (the organisers put the number at 5,000) from various states of India, and each community had a story to tell about its encounters with the forest department. 

These range
from their consent to development projects being obtained under duress to
unlawful detentions, burning of crops, and forced evictions to make way for
highways, big dams, cash crop plantations, mining and other projects.

In the
process, the Adivasi communities are also denied revenue from community forest
resources and grazing rights, and their forest rights in so-called protected
conservation zones are suspended. Their anger at being regarded as encroachers
on land inhabited by their ancestors was evident at the Delhi protest. 

These
accounts were punctuated by stories of successful struggles against coercive forestry
governance in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. These
struggles have drawn heft from the legal protections of the
Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest
Rights) Act, or the <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/library/resource/the-scheduled-tribes-and-other-traditional-forest-dwellers-recognition-of-forest-rights-act-2006/">Forest Rights Act</a> (FRA) of 2006.As have the people of Himachal Pradesh. At the rally, Prakash Bhandari of Palampur town in Kangra district, spoke of the increasing awareness in his state of the guarantees of the FRA. In Kinnaur district, for example, Adivasi communities are using the law to resist the Integrated Kashang Hydroelectric Project, which threatens their livelihoods and the ecosystem. Bhandari works with an NGO that focuses on the forest rights of communities. &quot;No major development project can take place here without overlapping with forestland…&quot; he says, in a state where over 60 per cent of the land is covered by forests. &quot;This is why it is important, both for the region’s environment and people, that their forest rights be recognised.”

Among the people at the rally was also R. Narasimhan, who works with the steel ministry. He is from a Fifth Schedule Area in Visakhapatnam district. With him were people of the Andhra Pradesh Girijana Sangham. “Tribals are protecting tribals, we have to,” he says, “while the government is busy abolishing our indigenous traditions.” He is concerned that the displacement and pollution from bauxite mining in his area will further the collapse of villages and cultures of the Lambadi and Konda Dhoras Adivasis in the district. Fifth Schedule Areas are predominantly tribal, and given special protections by the Indian Constitution. Still, in 2015, the Ministry of Environment and the state’s forest department gave clearances for extractive mining to two major corporations. Sangham activists allege this was done in direct contravention of the Forest Rights Act, as well as without the mandated consultations with the state&#39;s Tribal Advisory Council.The main demand
at the rally was the effective implementation of the FRA and its mandate of
recognising both the individual and community rights of traditional forest
dwelling communities. As many
participants in the protest emphasised, the threat to their forest rights now
also extends to the very existence of the FRA. 

The Supreme
Court court is hearing arguments on a petition challenging the constitutional
validity of the FRA. If the court upturns the FRA, it could legalise the
dispossession of over over a million people from Adivasi and other traditional
forest dwelling communities.

Badole’s wife, Riyali Dawar,
observes that the state’s actions against them increased after 2006. That year,
she was separated from her 11-day-old baby and detained for 45 days in a
faraway prison for protesting against evictions. She continues to fight, and at the Delhi rally chanted along with the others: &#39;o zameen sarkari hai, who zameen humari
hai &#39;(&#39;The state’s land is actually our land&#39;).

Still, the united
forest people’s movement has brought two significant victories. An early and major
petitioner – the Wildlife Trust of India – has withdrawn from the anti–FRA
case. And the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has withdrawn
the proposed amendment to the Indian Forest Act (1927) that sought to grant
forest officers the right to attack, and even shoot people it saw as
encroachers or poachers.  

On September
12, 2019, the Supreme Court permitted the intervention applications filed by community
activists and others seeking to defend the FRA, formally making them parties to
the Wildlife First &amp; Others Vs the Union of India case. Given the central government’s
reluctance to defend its own law, these are the only entities in this legal
battle who seek to protect the FRA. 

“The FRA is a
constitutional provision, we won’t bear an insult to our Constitution,” says
Nivada Rana about the petition in the Supreme Court. She is from Suda village in Uttar Pradesh’s Kheri district, one of two Adivasi petitioners in the case, and a leader of the Tharu Adivasi Mahila
Mazdoor Kisan Manch. She says she cannot recall a time when the forest
department wasn’t trying to harass residents of the villages that will be
forcibly resettled by the Dudhwa National Park. The FRA – which extends forest
rights to protected areas and requires prior informed consent of gram sabhas
for resettlement – has helped in getting individual forest, land and habitation
rights for many in her area. “We have fought for it [the FRA], and will
continue to fight for it,” she says.

A version of this <a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/haq-nahi-jail-sahi?fbclid=IwAR3evy1vq53EytpYT987sdIfJEVPGO36NKwBO1oAfA1R1NUu6f1PAJij2Uk">article </a>was
first published by the Oakland Institute on November 24, 2019.

'Let them ask animals for votes'

‘ওরা জন্তু-জানোয়ারের কাছে গিয়েই ভোট চাক’

‘সিহঁতে জীৱ-জন্তুক ভোট দিবলৈ কওঁক’

‘ସେମାନେ ପଶୁମାନଙ୍କୁ ଭୋଟ୍ ମାଗନ୍ତୁ’

‘அவர்கள் விலங்குகளிடமே வாக்களிக்கும்படி கேட்டுக் கொள்ளட்டும்’

‘उन्हें जानवरों से वोट मांगने दें’

’انہیں جانوروں سے ووٹ مانگنے دیں‘

Delhi

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

'Let them ask animals for votes'

At a rally last week in Delhi to demand utilisation of the Forest Rights Act, many spoke of encounters with the forest department, their struggles to secure forest rights, and resolve to save the FRA in an ongoing case

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit